Prospective residents may choose a continuing care retirement community (CCRC) based on its physical appearance, services or price. But residents’ satisfaction over time will very often hinge on their ability to engage in meaningful activities within the CCRC, according to researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  

Writing in the Journal of Cross Cultural Gerontology, the researchers apply the concept of “therapeutic landscapes” to the process that older people use to transition into and live in a retirement community. This concept, first suggested by geographer Wilbert M. Gesler in the early 1990s, holds that certain environments promote mental and physical well-being because they provide an individual with both an identity and a setting for therapeutic activities.  

Using this concept, the authors of “Moving to a Continuing Care Retirement Community: Occupations in the Therapeutic Landscape Process” suggest that successful transitions to retirement communities depend on the therapeutic value of that community. That value, they suggest, is directly associated with the level of engagement that residents enjoy within the CCRC environment. 

To test their theory, researchers studied the transition experiences of 116 older people who completed a questionnaire about their level of engagement in 20 activities before and after they moved to a CCRC. Typically, residents engaged in different activities after their move, with a number reporting more party-going and less grocery shopping. However, researchers discovered that residents who maintained an overall high level of engagement in activity were more likely to be satisfied with the CCRC.